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When you here of “search engine optimization,” you likely think of Google. This makes sense, as Google is clearly the alpha dog when it comes to search engines, holding 63.8% of the market share. But there is also a second search engine that you should focus on to maximize your business’s exposure.

No, it’s not Bing. It’s YouTube.

Yes, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world (and it just so happens that it is owned by the first).

In this article, you will learn how to optimize your YouTube videos for search. I will go over the basics of YouTube SEO, and even delve a bit into some more advanced hacks that most people never think to use.

Just like website search engine optimization, the strategies used for video SEO are universal regardless which platform is hosting your video (be it YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion or whatever else). However, given the size of YouTube, this is video platform I will focus on in this article.

But first, let’s talk about why you should even bother:

Benefits of Video

Message

First and foremost, video allows you to deliver your marketing message through a popular and growing medium. According to Cisco, by 2019, 80% of Internet traffic will come from video, surpassing any other channel. By creating and hosting videos on YouTube, your local business has the opportunity to tap into this growing channel.

In addition, different people prefer to consume content – and learn – in different ways; some people prefer to read a text-based article, while others prefer video. And very often, people who prefer video have no patience for text (and vice versa).

Expertise

When you capture the attention of new customers, video provides you with an additional opportunity to establish your local business as the expert. For example, if you are a plumber, you most likely already have a basic website that explains the offerings you provide and your local service area. You can take your strategy to a whole new level with a series of how-to videos.

Note: Many local businesses are often afraid to give away “trade secrets” in online videos by revealing how they would handle a job. In reality, all an online video series will do is show customers that you know what you are doing. Your customers aren’t suddenly going to start installing their new boilers and your competitors already know how to do this.

Google rankings

If you optimize your videos properly, you can rank them not just in YouTube, but that other search engine as well, Google.

Google owns YouTube, so it obviously wouldn’t mind you watching videos hosted there. Additionally, Google favors sites with a lot of authority in their rankings and there are very few sites as authoritative as YouTube.

However, for some smaller competition niches (like ultra-local keywords), you can also rank videos hosted on other platforms, such as Vimeo.

In general, there are specific types of content for which Google will favor video, and you will often see these come up in the results.